Some furloughed U.S. workers may double dip on pay

Updated 6:12 pm, Monday, October 21, 2013

Bronwyn Hogan leaves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in Sacramento after she was furloughed.

Bronwyn Hogan leaves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in Sacramento after she was furloughed.

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press

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SAN YSIDRO, CA - OCTOBER 03: U.S. Border Patrol agent Jerry Conlin stands on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border on October 3, 2013 at the San Ysidro port of enty into Mexico, California. While hundreds of thousands of government workers were furloughed due to the federal shutdown, thousands of Border Patrol agents, air-traffic controllers, prison guards and other federal employees deemed "essential" remain on duty, although their pay may be delayed. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) less

SAN YSIDRO, CA - OCTOBER 03: U.S. Border Patrol agent Jerry Conlin stands on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border on October 3, 2013 at the San Ysidro port of enty into Mexico, California. While ... more

Photo: John Moore, Getty Images

Some furloughed U.S. workers may double dip on pay

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Federal workers in some states could keep the unemployment benefits they received during the 16-day government shutdown, even though Congress provided all furloughed workers with retroactive pay.

The legislation that ended the 1995-96 federal shutdown made it clear that furloughed workers would get back pay, but would have to return any unemployment compensation they received during the hiatus.

The continuing resolution that ended this year's shutdown also provided retro pay, but "it was not as clear cut" whether they would be entitled to keep their unemployment benefits, says Jason Kuruvilla, a spokesman for the U.S. Labor Department.

He explained that the Labor Department "provides a federal framework for states to determine how the unemployment system works, and states pass laws built upon the federal framework."

The department is preparing guidance on whether furloughed workers can keep their unemployment benefits.

"States will have to use the guidance we provide and apply it to their own state (unemployment insurance) laws. Some will make them pay it back, some will allow them to keep it," Kuruvilla said.

In California, unemployed workers get up to $450 per week in unemployment benefits after a one-week waiting period. Although federal workers apply for unemployment the same way as other laid-off workers, the federal government reimburses states for unemployment benefits paid to federal employees.

About 700,000 workers nationwide were furloughed during the shutdown; Kuruvilla could not say how many applied for unemployment.

The California Employment Development Department previously estimated that about 245,000 federal workers in California could be impacted by the shutdown, but it could not say how many applied for benefits, nor whether they would be entitled to keep them.

EDD typically would require any person who received back pay while also receiving unemployment benefits to repay the benefits to the state, EDD spokeswoman Loree Levy says. "However, we are awaiting final official guidance from the (Labor Department) on the issue related to the federal government shutdown. Once we have final word, we will update our website and social media information accordingly."

EDD has already been struggling to keep up with existing claims. A software system installed over the Labor Day weekend caused widespread delays in processing claims for people already receiving benefits.

Clawing back money from double-dipping federal workers would add to that workload.

Kuruvilla said states could decide that chasing down federal workers is more trouble than it's worth and let them keep the money.

The problem started Oct. 14 and was caused by the installation of a new pricing system. Schwab hopes it will be corrected by Tuesday.

When Schwab customers log in to their brokerage accounts, they see the following notice: "Due to a technical issue, holders of some preferred and fixed income securities may be seeing some incorrect values. We are working to resolve the issue and apologize for the inconvenience."

"We have implemented fixes and the situation has been stabilized, but we'll need to see the market open in the morning to be completely sure," Schwab spokesman Greg Gable said.

He said the glitch has not affected market quotes, nor has it caused any buy and sell transactions to be mispriced.

"The issue wasn't on trades themselves, it was how prices were being presented on the Web," Gable says.

Aaron Stern, equity trading manager at Main Street Research in Sausalito, which holds customer accounts at Schwab, said that some clients noticed last Thursday and Friday that their account values were down 5 to 7 percent on days when the market was up.

The pricing glitch "may have caused incorrect market values and incorrect daily gain/loss figures on your Schwab.com account viewer," Stern wrote in an e-mail to Main Street clients.

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